PALM SUNDAY IN
CHELSEA 1908
It was a
beautiful but cool Sunday morning, except for a strong wind from thenorthwest.
The wind, blowing throughout the previous night, averaged
twenty-five miles per hour and at sunrise began to increase. By eight
o’clock, the wind had reached thirty miles per hour and by noon had
reached forty miles per hour with strong gusts. The gale force winds
did little to deter residents from making their way to Palm Sunday services.
Few if
any noticed a thread of smoke rising in the western sky, a cloud of
disaster was beginning to descend on Chelsea.
At 10:44
A.M. an alarm of fire was received from street box 28 for a fire in a
pile of rags put out to dry in a vacant lot on the corner of Second
and Carter Street. Meanwhile the winds had lifted burning rags to the
roof of the Boston Blacking Company igniting the building. Upon
arrival Chief Spencer ordered a second alarm as a precaution due to
the high winds. Inspite of the wind the fire was knocked down
quickly. While the fire department was making up, with some apparatus
already returned to quarters, a fire was sighted in T. Lewitzky’s
three story rag shop one-hundred yards from the original fire. The
building was fully involved in a matter of minutes. Chief Spencer
ordered box 698, the mutual aid call for help from Boston. Sparks and
flaming debris were being carried by the wind igniting many other
buildings in the area. Chapin and Sawdin tar paper factory across the
street, ignited and burned with a furious heat from the tar paper. A
shed nearby used to store gasoline, blew up; from this point on the
fire was out of
control.
At the
time of the fire of April 12, 1908, the Chelsea fire department
consisted of seventy-seven men, twenty-one permanent firefighters and
fifty six call men, one chief and one assistant chief. The permanent
firefighters were on duty twenty-four hours a day, each man being
allowed three hours per day for meals and one day off in every eight.
Call men were permitted to work elsewhere but were subject to call at
all times. The call man was under civil service and paid $200 per
year, but he was fined fifty cents for each and every roll call he
failed to answer. The apparatus was all horse drawn with three
steamers, two hose wagons, one chemical wagon, one ladder truck, one
buggy for the chief and twenty-four horses.
It was a
rapidly moving fire, reaching its most distant point in about five
hours and all buildings that caught fire were totally destroyed
inside of ten hours. By the time the fire was under control, 492
acres of Chelsea was ashes and rubble. Block after block from Summer
and Second Street north to the railroad tracks, wiping out Everett
Avenue, Walnut and Fourth Streets. From Bellingham Square and the
business district of Broadway the flames ravaged the palatial homes
on Bellingham Hill and continued eastward to the river burning the
Chelsea Street bridge and the railroad bridge to East Boston.
Due to
the catastrophic proportions of the fire. Mayor Beck requested Acting
Governor Draper to call in the militia. The militia was called at
11:36 A.M. Three officers and sixty-one men of the 5th Company of the
Coast Artillery Corps of Chelsea reported. The men reported to the
Armory on Broadway across from the library, to change into their
service uniform, leaving their civilian clothes, watches and other
valuables in their lockers. The Armory was completey destroyed by the
fire. Fifty-three more militia units reported to Chelsea for around
the clock duty. Seven hundred tents were set up in various sections
of the city while others set up in the stalled street cars, empty
stores and GAR Hall. All police were ordered to report for duty on
the sounding of the second alarm at 10:56 A.M. Many of the police as
well as the fire fighters, had to remain on duty while their homes
were destroyed by the fast moving fire. More than one-half of the
curbstones were crumbled to stones by the heat. Eighteen miles of
streets were burned. Thirteen churches, eight schools, the Frost
Hospital, the library, the post office, YMCA, the City Hall, four
newspapers, and the Board of Health Building were destroyed. In all
3000 buildings were destroyed and 18,000 people made homless.
Nineteen people lost their lives in the fire. A five member Board of
Control was appointed by the Governor and given all legislative and
executive powers to rebuild and rehabilitate the city. The Board
assumed office on June 3rd with temporary rooms at Chelsea High
School on Crescent Avenue until August 17th when it moved to the
Court House in Chelsea Square.
Twenty-nine
months later, Chelsea boasted of a new City Hall, two new large
schools, a new library, a new city yard, two new fire stations, new
churches and eight hundred and sixty buildings were now standing.
Streets were widened, some extended and new streets laid out. Chelsea
stood proud, the city did not receive any State or Federal money. One
million dollars was borrowed on city bonds to rebuild city
properties. The loan was paid back in fifty years. The people of
Massachusetts raised $360,000 in contributions for the relief of the
people of Chelsea. The pluck of it’s citizens put Cheisea back on
it’s feet.